


Something In Common

by shipless_ocean



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Coffee, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mild Sexual Content, One Shot, Post-Canon, Romance, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 10:57:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6563494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipless_ocean/pseuds/shipless_ocean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They go through the same thing, and use that to their advantage.</p><p>Mike & Sam, after the events of the game, one shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something In Common

He didn't know if they ever had an awful lot in common, it didn't seem like it. But then again, they hardly ever had spoken about anything of importance. They wasted their words on fighting about movie choices or who had spilled a beer bottle.

 

Now her eyes seemed to be the most familiar he'd ever known. Because she understood.

 

Waiting for a group therapy session seemed pretty absurd to him. They were a group waiting outside of a room they should enter to speak about their problems while they were avoiding each other's eyes and most definitely not talking about their problems. Except Sam. She wasn't afraid to look at him whilst the other four were staring at their toes. But that was simply how she was, how she'd always been. She was never afraid to face anything, he noticed that back on Blackwood Mountain when they teamed up to set a house on fire.

 

It seemed so unrealistic now, like he had been injected with someone else's memory, he felt anything but heroic. He had a reoccurring nightmare. He was trapped in an elevator that went down and down and down for what seemed like hours, only accompanied by the sound of rattling chains somewhere on the outside. When he woke up, covered in sweat in the middle of the night, the first thing that came to his mind was that he deserved having it.

 

It was something he knew she could relate to. She never verbally stated it. But he knew she had loved _him_ , it was painfully obvious. He could see when someone loved someone else. And back then, one of the most painful of many painful events was having to tell her what the wendigo had done to him. She had thrown herself into his arms and cried for the first time that morning. Sometimes, at the end of his nightmare, just right before he woke up, there would also be an ear-battering cracking noise. He wondered if she blamed him. He knew he would. But she was probably more just than that.

* * *

 

He caressed her shoulder.

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that”, Sam's hand was shaking slightly as she wiped a single tear from her cheek, “I just can't stand how unforgiving she is towards him. How should he have known what was about to happen? He's..he's dead now anyway, so what's the point?”

 

“Young man, I'm sure this is the ladies room”, Mike turned around towards an elderly lady that had just come in and gave her a glance that said ' _Fuck off and remove that stick from your ass_ ' better than any verbal attempt ever could have, so she went on moving towards one of the stalls.

 

“You know, Sam”, he said after a few moments had passed, “Em doesn't mean harm. She...she doesn't understand that it hurts you. And why.”

Their therapy sessions usually ended this way. Emily couldn't keep her cool and started screaming random insults at Josh.

As they had come to an agreement not to mention wendigos in their story anymore, as no one believed them anyway, he was the only person left to complain about to the therapist.

 

“You do”, Sam looked up at him. Her eyes were swollen red. In the updated version, Josh died jumping down a mine shaft, crashing his head, because he couldn't live with the guilt of having killed Jessica for revenge. Even though that bent the truth quite a bit, Mike was sure that Emily still meant every single abusive word she uttered about him.

This time Sam had lost it and screamed back for him. Deep down Mike hoped that they would investigate further and find at least glimpses of the truth so she wouldn't have to torture herself anymore.

 

Mike gave her a chuckle. “Well, I'm not the smartest guy, but I'm also not an empathy tractor like Em. I should know. I've dated her.” Now Sam was laughing and slapped his upper arm. Mission accomplished. “Wanna go grab some coffee before I offend more people with my sheer presence?”

* * *

 

The coffee they had after their weekly therapy sessions would become a ritual and much more therapeutic than the actual thing. As Matt was usually busy comforting Emily whereas Chris and Ashley were clearly already having problems to cope with somehow reconciling their romantic relationship and dealing with terrible trauma, the dots connected easily.

 

He didn't tell her about what he could see in her eyes just yet, but he told her about his nightmare. She looked at him, giving him a smile, but it wasn't a cheerful one. She wanted to convey a sense of sympathy.

 

“I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn't left the two of you down there. A small change in the situation could have made all the difference”

“We can't change it anymore now, Sam”

“You're one to speak”, now her smile was a more challenging one. Of course she was right. He was much harder on himself than he probably deserved.

 

When it got impossible to sleep through the night, he'd call her now. The stakes that she would pick up because she couldn't either were pretty high. Then he would tell her about how he found one of Jess' shirts in his drawer and how much it smelled of her, or about how the daffodils his mum planted on the balcony reminded him of her, even though he couldn't even exactly say why. She'd cry sometimes and tried to describe the despair she felt because she never confessed to Josh. How she thought that it might have changed things for the better. Mike reassured her that he knew Josh felt the same way about her and that, at least deep down, he'd surely have known.

 

He told her how he wasn't able to relate to anyone at college, how the people around him seemed dull and stupid. How they didn't know shit about the world. Sam gave him a small laugh. “I know what you mean.”

 

Their phone calls got longer and longer. When summer came, the hours sometimes added up until dawn. They let more profane things slip into the conversations. What they had for dinner. Which class they hated the most and which ones they could afford to skip. After a long pause Sam had used to paint the fingernails on her complete left hand, he said in a monotonous tone: “Come over, Sammy.”

 

It felt like a betrayal at first and Mike could tell from the untypical timid look she gave him when she entered the room that she felt the same. But it felt good to feel his body again, to feel alive again. Never before had he done anything like this without a master plan. When it came to women, Mike Munroe knew what he was doing. But the present was too sharp to make plans for the future. Her breath on his neck made him loose his sense of time. He tried to get a hold of it by exploring her entire body with his fingers, but it didn't make a difference. “You're extraordinary Samantha”, he sighed into her ear.

* * *

 

His own therapist, the one he didn't go see with the others, didn't seem really pleased. It was a pity, because he really liked her, and he didn't like disagreeing with people he didn't have a problem with. He wondered why he was such an honest soul all the time.

“Mr. Munroe, I am not in the position to tell you what and what not to do in you personal relationships. That's not my job. But are you sure that starting a romantic relationship with someone you have lived through a traumatic event with is a good idea?”

“It's not a romantic relationship!”

“Oh, really?”, she raised an eyebrow. Mike absolutely despised when people raised eyebrows at him, “what is it, then?”

“It's more complicated than that”

“Please elaborate.”

“Sam is....”, he struggled to find the right words and turned his head from one side to the other, “Sam's like a bird”, just after he said it did he realize that he used the same word as Josh to describe her. She had told him about it. “She is...greater than me, you know. We spend time with each other because we understand each other, and we...have sex with each other because we want to feel loved”, he smiled sadly, “that doesn't mean we're a couple. Like you said, unlikely to work out. Unhealthy. And I'm not in love with her.”

“I am not sure if you mean what you are saying”, she smiled at him and at this moment, reminded him of Sam a little. He felt annoyed by how he started to like her more because of it. He pressed his lips together and waited for a few moments before he replied.

“Don't tell me what I'm feeling”

“I apologize, Mr. Munroe. That wasn't my place.”

 

When he left the building he felt to urge to smoke, which was pretty strange, because he had never smoked in his life.

* * *

 

 

Mike caught himself checking out other girls at campus and not feeling the slightest desire to get with any of them. He was screwed. Sam had started sleeping at his place the other week, before she would always get back home, silently sneaking out of the door like she had just smashed her grandmothers hand-painted vase. Her presence helped him to fall asleep and actually stay asleep until the alarm went off. He wondered if he had the same effect on her, but he was too afraid to ask. The way they slept with each other became rougher. Sometimes she'd take control or give him head, sometimes he'd pick her up and push her up against the wall. “Oh God, Mike, oh God” - the memory of her voice sent shivers down his spine during the middle of the day. There was more sweat than breathing between them now. He remembered Josh's word in the shed. _He'll treat her right!_ He just wanted to slap himself in the face.

 

Before the group therapy sessions, they were now also trying to avoid each other's eyes. Mike was sure that at least Ashley had noticed, but she didn't say anything. She was probably just as confused as he felt at the moment.

 

After he ordered their usual coffee (Latte for her, cappuccino for him), he looked at her critically. “What is it, Mike?”, she gave him a wide smile. She squeezed her eyes together, the sun was shining bright. It made her look gorgeous. Like she was in a place she belonged.

“It's nothing, Sammy.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Just something I came up with today, I think the dynamic of these two is quite interesting, already during the game, so I needed to explore it. I know I had to betray my OTP for this, but oh well. I left the ending this vague on purpose, I want everyone to imagine for themselves how they end up ... :-)


End file.
